Pro-Con: Don’t scrap competency-based graduation requirements

Editors note: This is part of a pro-con debate over whether state lawmakers should get rid of high school exit exams. The opposing viewpoint can be found here.

For the last 25 years, Washington state has worked toward a competency-based education system — one that is rooted in what students know and what skills they can demonstrate, not just in the amount of time students sit in the classroom.

Our state requires all students to earn 24 credits to earn a diploma. That requirement ensures students take the classes necessary to give them a chance to transition successfully to post-secondary education, training or work.

However, it is the state’s assessment-based graduation requirements, put in place more than a decade ago, that ensure students graduate with at least a basic set of reading, writing and math skills.

As a state, we collectively decided it was a great disservice to promote students who, without basic skills in a few core subjects, would face extremely limited life and career options after high school.

Isn’t it better to find out in 10th grade if a student doesn’t have the minimum reading, writing and math skills to be prepared for life, when there is still time to get assistance and course correct, rather than waiting until they graduate from high school?

During last year’s legislative session, state lawmakers addressed a variety of concerns about the assessment system.

To give students more time for remediation, the Legislature moved the assessment from 11th grade to 10th grade. To ensure local districts had more tools, the Legislature expanded alternative options for students, including a locally determined course and assessment. And, in case there are students who can meet all other requirements for graduation and have the requisite skills, but cannot demonstrate them on the state assessments or the state or local alternatives, the Legislature provided a waiver for the classes of 2014 through 2018, whereby students can appeal directly to the State Superintendent of Public Instruction.

These were prudent changes, developed over weeks of negotiation, enacted with unanimous support, and signed by the governor.

Now some in the Legislature want to scrap the assessment-based requirements altogether, even though graduation rates for every student group have steadily increased since the requirements were put in place, and college remediation rates have fallen over the same time period.

Bills introduced in the House (HB 1046 and HB 2621) and the Senate (SB 6144) would abandon the unanimous bipartisan compromise from last year before it takes effect. If one of these bills passes, the state would return to a system whereby students receive high school diplomas even if they are unable to demonstrate minimum 10th grade standards in reading, writing and math — standards that were intentionally set well below career- and college-ready standards.

Furthermore, de-linking the state’s competency-based requirements from graduation will ensure that policymakers and educators no longer receive meaningful data on the performance of Washington’s high schools.

The data are used not only to hold high schools accountable for state and federal accountability purposes, but more importantly, they are used to trigger and direct support for students.

In 2015, as Washington was transitioning to the Smarter Balanced Assessments, high school students were required to take the exam in English and Language Arts, but the results were not used for graduation purposes.

Without the requirement in place, only 58 percent of students took the assessment. The rest refused to participate. When there is no connection between assessments and graduation, many students in high school will not take them. Consequently, the resulting data will have little to no value.

Just a few months ago, the Legislature passed, and the governor signed, the largest tax increase in state history.

When fully implemented, the state’s McCleary fix will provide $13.3 billion in new K-12 education spending over eight years. If this bill passes, and lawmakers remove the assessment-based graduation requirement, we will have statistically meaningless data after eighth grade to judge the effectiveness of those taxpayer investments.

Lawmakers should honor the commitment they made unanimously last year and give the system a chance to work.

This story was originally published February 2, 2018 at 4:42 PM with the headline "Pro-Con: Don’t scrap competency-based graduation requirements."